Saturday, August 20, 2011

Speak Asia: 5 get bail, firm in talks on repayment to members

The Esplanade Court on Thursday granted bail to five of the six accused in the Speak Asia multi-level marketing scam. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police probing the business model of Speak Asia had arrested its Chief Operating Officer Tarak Bajpai (36), technical head for the portal Rajeev Mehrotra, assistant for daily portal operations and incharge of regular pop-ups Shaikh Rais Latif (32), finance accountant Ravi Jankraj Khanna and panelist Deepankar Sarkar on July 29. All of them were granted bail on Thursday against a surety of Rs 3 lakh each.

A conditional bail restricts the accused from leaving the country and every accused will have to visit the EOW office every Monday and Thursday until the investigation is concluded. The sixth accused in the scam, Rahul Shah, the Mumbai based vice-president of Speak Asia’s back office company Tulsiyant Enterprises, is still in the EOW’s custody.